


Vice & Vulnerability

by viklikesfic (v_angelique)



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Action, Alpha Bucky Barnes, Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, BAMFs, Bonding, Feral Behavior, Hurt/Comfort, Knotting, M/M, Mating Cycles/In Heat, Mildly Dubious Consent, Non-Traditional Alpha/Beta/Omega Dynamics, Omega Steve Rogers, Omega Tony Stark, Pack Bonding, Pack Dynamics, Polyamory, Protectiveness, Scent Marking, Scenting, Sex Pollen, Threesome - M/M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-25
Updated: 2020-12-25
Packaged: 2021-03-10 19:02:12
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 6,602
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28312044
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/v_angelique/pseuds/viklikesfic
Summary: Neither Steve nor Tony are particularly submissive in day-to-day life, nor in their relationship, and Tony likes it that way. He likes the strength of his omega lover, and the way Steve doesn’t ping the same trauma-related issues alphas typically do. Yeah, so Tony’s got trust issues. And Steve’s still kind of mourning his dead lover.But this, this whimpering, seemingly terrified Steve, nosing into Tony’s neck to catch his scent, is unfamiliar territory, and Tony doesn’t like it. He’s going to have to breathe soon, and before he even does inhale the chemical, hefeelsit. It must be acting on his skin, or his scent receptors. Whatever it is, terror overwhelms him quick and sudden, and all he wants is to make himselfsmall, to hold onto Steve and submit. Of course, Steve doesn’t register as someone to submit to, but the desire is there nonetheless.Tony’s thinking is growing syrupy, time slowing down, and he feels pliant and docile and vulnerable while simultaneously scared out of his wits. He has no idea what’s happening. He’s confused, and all he wants to do is huddle close to Steve, rubbing against his packmate.Pack.Tony’s brain is loud, insistent.Stay together.
Relationships: James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers, James "Bucky" Barnes/Steve Rogers/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers/Tony Stark
Comments: 20
Kudos: 357
Collections: STB Bingo: Round One





	Vice & Vulnerability

**Author's Note:**

> STB Bingo Prompt: Reunion
> 
> CW: Kind of a mix between sex pollen, mildly dubious consent, and forced heat. Basically there is a drug that makes alphas and omegas revert to feral behavior, but everyone is genuinely attracted to each other as well. If this kind of thing is triggering for you, please care for yourself!

Steve and Tony have been dating for nearly a year when they join the team on a fairly routine Avengers mission that will in fact permanently change their lives (not that they ever could have predicted it). There’s a HYDRA facility, and a series of underground tunnels, and Tony isn’t wearing the suit because he’s not supposed to  _ need  _ the suit. The mission’s technically over in fact, and they’re just doing cleanup. There aren’t any heat readings nearby, and so nothing pings as a concern when Tony squeezes ahead of Steve through a hallway too narrow for the suit to traverse, following a bundle of cables to its source. It’s only when they reach the room at the end—room? It’s more like a cave or a cell, round walls and nothing inside, the cables continuing through the walls at the far end—that they realize their mistake. A heavy steel gate drops too quickly for Steve to catch it, sealing their way out like an action movie cliché.

“Shit,” Tony mutters. Steve immediately tries the comms.

“Hawkeye? Widow? Do you read?”

“Anything?” Tony asks after a moment. Steve shakes his head, his brow furrowing. Tony’s comms are in the suit, which is on the other side of what appears to be a blast door. He tries to summon it, but his bracelet doesn’t even indicate a connection. That shouldn’t be possible, if the only thing in the way is steel and concrete tunnel. Something’s definitely fishy. “Fuck.” Tony inspects the floor, the ceiling. The latter has a large grate in it, but it’s dark on the other side. A way out, maybe, except it’s too high up to boost each other and the walls are smooth. And according to the maps they’ve seen, there shouldn’t be anything  _ there _ but bedrock. Still, it’s their best option.

Steve, clearly having the same idea, pulls his shield off his back and eyes the metal bars critically. “Stand against the wall?”

Tony nods and does as he’s told, pressing his back to the surface so that Steve can hurl the shield straight up at the weakest point he can see. There’s a terrific clang, and Steve catches the vibranium disc on its way back down with just one bounce, but the grate remains in place. 

“I think I see a dent,” Steve reports hopefully, and readies himself to throw the thing again. But before he lets it loose, there’s a hissing sound and a yellowish gas starts seeping down from the ceiling. 

“Oh hell no,” Tony groans, tugging his t-shirt up over his nose. Steve looks similarly worried, but his instinct is to get closer to Tony, yanking his cowl off and pressing the thicker fabric up against his lover’s face. It’s a reasonable choice—any chemical is going to affect Tony more than Steve. Steve motions for Tony to stay and then returns to the center of the space, tossing the shield straight up again. The gas has to be pressurized, with how quickly it’s filling the room. Steve only manages two upward flings before the stuff reaches eye level, and he starts whimpering. Tony’s eyes go wide and he crouches down, delaying the inevitable. Steve gets one more throw in, but then he’s crouching down like Tony, scuttling closer. His eyes look suddenly wild. Whatever it is to affect  _ Cap _ like that so quickly, Tony’s not excited about inhaling. He takes a deep breath, tugging Steve’s body close to his, his back to the wall, and holds it. Steve whimpers like a puppy, tucking his face in Tony’s neck. It’s disturbing, to say the least.

Steve’s never this openly frightened, omega designation notwithstanding. Neither of them are what anyone would call a typical omega, even leaving aside the matter of their non-traditional relationship. They’re co-leaders of a team of superheroes, for one thing. More importantly, they don’t have an Alpha. While pack bonds crop up from time to time among alphas and omegas, both designations are fairly rare, and a pair bond is much more common. And pair bonds are always between one alpha and one omega, like what Steve had before the war. 

Neither Steve nor Tony are particularly submissive in day-to-day life, nor in their relationship, and Tony likes it that way. He likes the strength of his omega lover, and the way Steve doesn’t ping the same trauma-related issues alphas typically do. Yeah, so Tony’s got trust issues. And Steve’s still kind of mourning his dead lover. But it works for them, and the tests Bruce ran after six months confirm that they both have the blood markers found in two omegas who are part of a pack with the same Alpha… but without an alpha. In other words, they’re bonded, and it works for them.

But this, this whimpering, seemingly terrified Steve, nosing into Tony’s neck to catch his scent, is unfamiliar territory, and Tony doesn’t like it. He’s going to have to breathe soon, and before he even does inhale the chemical, he  _ feels _ it. It must be acting on his skin, or his scent receptors. Whatever it is, terror overwhelms him quick and sudden, and all he wants is to make himself  _ small _ , to hold onto Steve and  _ submit _ . Of course, Steve doesn’t register as someone to submit to, but the desire is there nonetheless. 

They cling to each other, shivering, the feeling of helplessness growing more intense as the gas fills their lungs or maybe…  _ definitely _ , Tony decides... their scent receptors. Whatever it is must be hormonal. Tony’s thinking is growing syrupy, time slowing down, and he feels pliant and docile and vulnerable while simultaneously scared out of his wits. He has no idea what’s happening. He’s confused, and all he wants to do is huddle close to Steve, rubbing against his packmate.

_ Pack _ . 

Tony’s brain is loud, insistent.

_ Stay together _ .

He’s reverting to a more primal, animal version of himself, almost like he’s in heat. But he’s not slick and he doesn’t feel aroused. It’s just comforting to scent Steve, his familiar fresh sharp lemon verbena scent calming Tony’s nose. It’s cool and clean, with just a bare hint of the spicy kind of ginger notes that were much more prominent when they met. Scents shift over time, reflecting environment and relationship, and it makes Tony feel warm to notice the changes since they’ve been bonded.

Now there’s also a hint of Tony’s own clean burning woodsmoke scent blended into Steve’s, but it’s a hack. One thing their omega-omega bond can’t produce is the scent-blending that happens in a pack. But it’s easy enough to rub a few bits of fabric on a lover’s scent gland, and to then tuck those scraps strategically about one’s person. So the scent coming from Steve doesn’t have the slightly acrid twist to it that Tony’s real scent puts off when he’s afraid. And Steve’s scent is only soured where Tony can smell it from Steve’s own body. 

They huddle there for what seems like an age, or might be twenty minutes, shaking and nearly paralyzed with fear, whimpering like puppies. Tony’s hypervigilant to threats, but he can’t strategize or defend himself. Finally, the silence is suddenly pierced by a shout.

“Get up!” a voice booms from overhead. It’s not Hawkeye or the Widow—no one they can trust, necessarily, but both Steve and Tony scramble to their feet, driven by instinct. It feels sickeningly familiar, and Tony thinks of Ty and Sunset and the man in the caves and  _ Obie _ , and he wants so badly to  _ run _ , but his body can only follow orders. He still clings to Steve, standing on shaky legs, watching helplessly as the grate slides open and men in tactical gear rappel through the gap in a narrow file, one man dropping out of the darkness at a time. Three assault rifles are pointed at Tony’s head, and another man grabs the shield from Steve while he’s watching Tony in absolute terror. None of the men are alphas, but Tony still feels the instinct to obey.

“Tell me how to access your labs,” one man barks in a European accent Tony can’t quite place. “No funny business. I have a man high up at Stark with an eye on Miss Potts.”

“Please,” Tony whispers. “No.”

“Do it!” There are seven men now, scattered and armed. 

“Steve! Quick!”

They’ve rehearsed this, of course. It was heartsickening, but necessary. Now Steve’s muscle memory grabs Tony, locks him in place, and clamps a hand over Steve’s mouth. 

“Put it down, Captain. Put it down or I’ll shoot him in the head.” 

He looks serious. Tony’s heart is literally breaking for him. But they’ve practiced this. Steve knows how to do the hardest thing he’s had to in his life. He knows that HYDRA access to Tony’s labs would risk millions of lives, and that Tony could never fucking live with that. He’s willing to grant Tony the dignity of his choice, he loves him that much.

But oh, how Tony aches for him. He knows somehow that for Steve, this is much harder than putting a plane down with his own body inside. He let Bucky fall by accident, and now he’s got to let Tony fall on purpose. Tony hates this with everything inside him, and he presses his hands to Steve’s forearm and over his hand, holding him in place as Steve fights the influence of the drug.

“No,” Steve whispers, and the villain pauses a long moment, looking Tony in the eye like he’s weighing his options, before there’s suddenly a bright flash, the sound of shots going off, and then an explosion overhead. Tony and Steve both drop instinctively, hands over their heads. Steve reaches for a shield that’s not there, Tony can practically sense it despite his lack of vision. There’s a loud series of thuds, and Tony’s blinking furiously to clear his vision when smoke fills the room, thick and white this time. It makes him cough, and he can barely follow the action as the high whine of a person zipping down a steel cable is followed by a series of punches, kicks, and strangling sounds. Steve and Tony stay huddled together, pressed against a wall, as the HYDRA squad is efficiently taken down by what sounds incredibly like only one man. It’s lucky the smoke made it impossible to see more than a foot ahead at first, or they surely would have been shot. Maybe that was the idea. 

Still, their rescuer is an unknown man, armed and highly dangerous, who came into this room by a route that shouldn’t exist. Tony tugs at Steve’s arm, pulling them both up to their feet. He grabs Steve’s shield from a fallen body nearby as the smoke slowly clears, thinning up into the silo of space above their heads. Steve takes it and holds it in front of them both. 

Tony first takes in the round room full of slaughtered bodies, surrounded by coils of thick cable. Then through the rising smoke, a man comes into view, snarling and stalking towards them. Tony locks up tight, scenting an alpha, not to mention the mystery man has  _ a fully-articulated metal arm _ , but Steve drops the shield with a loud clang and falls to his knees so hard he pulls Tony with him.

Steve’s whimpering like he’s just been dropped, and Tony doesn’t expect this kind of fear reaction from Steve, but he does the best he can to comfort him with touch, wrapping his arms around Steve’s middle and nuzzling his shoulderblade through the uniform. That’s all he can do, just thinking the guy’s face is vaguely familiar, before he gets close enough for Tony to scent.

And then all Tony can think is: oh, fuck.

That’s Bucky Barnes.

~*~

Bucky—the soldier who supposedly died over 70 years ago—is dressed in some combination of body armor and fetish gear, armed to the teeth, and does not hesitate to grab Steve hard by the hair, rubbing the inside of his wrist over Steve’s neck.

Scent-marking him.

Steve goes completely pliant, and Tony just thinks oh  _ fuck _ .

Bucky’s scent is warm ginger, with a barely detectable hint of lemon underneath. That fading ginger note wasn’t just a natural shift, or something related to Steve and Tony’s relationship that affected Steve’s scent. That note was Steve’s former Alpha.

And then suddenly, Bucky’s dragging Steve to his feet, shield in hand, clipping a single dangling cable into his belt, and Tony realizes he’s watching as the love of his life is taken away. This can’t be happening. Of course it’s happening. His whimper sounds like a scream, but they don’t shoot up on the wire together after all. Steve presses a hand to Bucky’s chest.

“No, Alpha. Wait.”

It’s obviously taking him effort to get words out. At Tony’s size and baseline human physiology, he’s completely non-verbal. All Steve can do is point at Tony and plead with his eyes. But Bucky listens. 

He unclips the line, hands the shield to Steve, and turns his steel gaze on Tony. Tony can’t help his instincts to cower in fear, to scuttle backwards on his butt. Any actual fighting tactics are lost to him in this state. His instincts only know  _ run _ .  _ Don’t get caught. _

Those instincts are pointless here.

Bucky, or whatever he’s become, is a consummate predator. He stalks Tony silently, crouches down and grabs Tony hard by the back of the neck. Tony freezes in submission and lets Bucky stick his nose in Tony’s neck, give it a hard sniff. He’s not made for any other response. And Bucky is primal, his scent hot and possessive. He clasps the back of Tony’s head and presses their foreheads together, and it’s overwhelming. Bucky’s whole nature is so feral, and it feels somehow beyond the temporary way Steve and Tony have been affected. Tony wouldn’t be surprised if Bucky’s been like this for years.

_ God, how many years? _

Steve whimpers, sounds of encouragement, and crouches behind his alpha. Bucky looks at Tony for a long moment then growls.

“Come.”

His voice sounds hoarse, disused. Bucky clips into the line again, and the two omegas follow him. Tony ends up in the middle, arms around Bucky’s shoulders with the line between them and his sneakers on top of Bucky’s boots. He blushes when he realizes his feet are small enough to make it work. Steve grabs the line itself with one leather-gloved hand above Tony’s head, and wraps his legs around their waists for good measure. When Bucky flips the lever, they zip up fast, but Bucky manages to keep his feet remarkably flexed and holds them both tight to his body. The line tops out dangling in front of a wide-ish kind of horizontal pipe, just big enough for a man to crawl through with a backpack (or a shield). Steve maneuvers his body into the pipe first, then gets his hands under Tony’s armpits and hauls him in with Bucky’s help. Before Bucky swings himself into the pipe, Tony gets a glimpse of a thick cable next to the one Bucky attached to the ceiling of the shaft, severed in an uneven, twisted shape that might result from being crushed in a very powerful metal hand. 

But the power source?

Normally, Tony would be sifting through possibilities rapid-fire, but he can’t  _ think _ with that alpha scent in his nose, and even though the yellow gas itself has passed, the effect hasn’t. He still feels vulnerable and uncharacteristically eager for alpha guidance. Normally, alpha scents don’t really affect him, but whatever HYDRA drugged them with is forcing a powerful reversion to basic nature. He wants to  _ depend _ on an alpha, he doesn’t feel like he could survive without one.

As they crawl through the tunnel, Tony keeps whimpering and looking back to Bucky for approval, and the soldier growls encouragement at him, reaching forward and nudging at his butt to keep moving. When he uses the metal hand, Tony shivers with arousal. That’s new. Ahead of him, Steve chitters happily, almost a purring sound. It’s low and rumbly and soothes something deep in Tony’s chest. 

The tunnel lets out into the main building and they quickly find Clint and Natasha, along with half a dozen reinforcements. Bucky steps out in front of both omegas and growls menacingly, drawing a gun and a long knife so quickly Tony thinks he  _ can’t _ be human.

“Wait!” Tony shouts. Though his hindbrain doesn’t really  _ want _ him to bother using his words right now, the mental fog has cleared a bit, and he thinks it’s more instinctive attraction and submissive draw to the alpha than the dynamic-activating drug. “Friends.” Tony touches Bucky’s shoulder, and the man growls low, his eyes never leaving the threat, but he doesn’t attack. 

“I have a Tower in New York. We can go there if we want to be alone. We can take one of the quinjets ourselves, even, Clint and Tasha will fit with the SHIELD team.”

“Uh, yeah,” Clint agrees, keeping his tone soft and his hands low. Natasha’s expression is more worrying, as she’s pale as the dead and looks like she’s eye-to-eye with a ghost. Maybe she’s recognized Bucky? But he’s not quite sure, in that case, why she’d be so terrified. People come back from the dead. She knows Steve. “That’ll be fine.”

Bucky nods sharply, and they get themselves to the Avengers’ jet in one piece. Bucky flies the damn thing, which is maybe actually not so bad, because all Tony wants to do is kneel. That’s why he finds himself on the floor in front of the co-pilot’s seat, settled between Steve’s thighs, which feels strangely peaceful. He nuzzles Steve’s inner thigh and already smells a more gingery lemon strong enough to seep through the suit.

“I have resources,” Tony murmurs after they’ve been in the air for twenty minutes, as the thought occurs to him through the pleasant haze of subspace. “Money. Weapons. Safehouses. All the tech you could want.”

Bucky doesn’t  _ say _ anything to that, but he does cup Tony’s jaw in his right hand, bending down to give Tony a kind of nuzzling acknowledgement of his contribution. He holds Tony’s gaze for a long moment, and Tony doesn’t want to be so damn affected by the praise, but he is.

There’s this secret desire for belonging that he’s never said anything about in years to anyone but Steve, but it re-awakened in him with Steve, reminding him of what that space in his heart feels like. He’s tried before, tried to fill the space, but his Alphas had never bonded with him— _ never wanted him _ , his traitorous heart supplies. 

He doesn’t think he’s ever wanted an alpha like this one, though. Instinctive desire for alpha approval is something Tony normally has no trouble tucking away, but now he turns to Bucky like a flower to the sun. It’s going to crush him if Bucky rejects him. Tony never could have guessed how much  _ more _ his desire for pack would be with an alpha like his boyfriend’s, a powerful alpha that also smells  _ divine _ like nothing Tony’s previously experienced. 

Bucky lands the jet at the Tower after maybe an hour has passed, maybe two. Tony’s subspace has him down for the count. Steve helps him to his feet, but his hulking blonde supersoldier has a kind of blissful hazy smile on his face as well, and Tony can scent the delight and ease on him like sunshine. Maybe that’s part of what makes Bucky appealing—it’s not  _ just _ Bucky, it’s Bucky’s Alpha edge wrapped up in the comfort and familiarity of  _ Steve _ .

Bucky herds the both of them out of the jet once they’ve powered it down and steers them towards the elevators. Tony directs JARVIS to take them to the penthouse, but Bucky shakes his head sharply. “Car,” he grunts, and so Tony redirects to the basement garage.

They take a black Audi, Bucky at the wheel. Normally Tony would never let a stranger drive one of his cars, but Tony would let  _ this  _ man break his heart and stomp on it with those steel-toed combat boots. By comparison, the car is minor. He steers them out of the neighborhood by a winding route, cutting red lights close and weaving around traffic.  _ Losing tails _ , Tony thinks. 

Sure enough, once they’re in Greenpoint Bucky parks in a spot that’s obscured from both CCTV and traffic cameras, according to Tony’s bracelet. Tony wonders how the hell he knows where to aim, but still follows the two supersoldiers as they duck through alleyways and down a couple of side streets, sticking to the shadows and strategically avoiding cameras. They end up in a basement apartment, no windows and just one entrance. It’s kind of a dump, but it’s warm and smells strongly of ginger. There’s a large round cushion in the center of the single room (with a bathroom door in one corner, but it only leads to a toilet and sink, and there’s not even a closet). The cushion has a few pillows on it and a single blue blanket. 

The whole setup could generally be described as pretty sad, and Bucky has the most embarrassed look on his face, but it’s a  _ den _ . It’s an alpha doing his best to create his own territory from what he can, and Bucky brought them here, and Tony’s heart swells. He can tell from the way Steve kisses him that he feels the same.

“ _ Alpha _ ,” Steve purrs. Tony approaches more cautiously, standing on tiptoes and kissing Bucky’s neck just over his pulse point, getting Bucky’s scent on his mouth. Tony’s shaking again, his body still flushed with fear. He thinks the drug itself has cleared his system, but it must have the after-effect of pushing his primal instincts into overdrive. 

Bucky  _ smells _ safe, but he’s also clearly dangerous, and Tony’s omega-sense makes him whimper after that single kiss. In return Bucky growls, releases Steve, and whips around to face Tony, backing him into the wall. Tony moans, helpless, and Bucky wraps one big hand around his throat. Tony’s pulse beats against the warm palm, not choking him but gently holding. He’s firm and safe and Tony lets out a huge exhale, almost collapsing. 

Of course, Bucky catches him before he can, pinning his body into the wall, and then he lifts Tony effortlessly over to the bare little nest. They hardly can all fit within the bounds of the basic nesting cushion, a wide soft bowl designed for a single alpha and omega pair. But they make it work, snuggled up together, quickly divesting themselves of shoes, boots, armor, and clothing. Once they’re all warm and naked and stacked like spoons in a drawer, Tony on the inside and Bucky at Steve’s back, Steve’s scent starts to change.

“ _ Alpha _ ,” he whimpers, rocking lightly against Tony’s ass. His modest omega cock teases at Tony’s hole and Tony shivers hard, thinking of all the times they’ve rutted together like this alone. Now there’s Bucky, but Tony can only see his edge of the cushion and the wall, can only feel as Steve whimpers and rubs against him and struggles for words. He’s gone into a heat from the stress, it’s clear from the familiar way his smell goes sweeter. They’ve had a couple of heats together, helped each other through it in creative ways.

Finally, Steve manages to form a sentence, or as much of one as can be expected in this state. “ _ Alpha _ ,” he moans. “Knot my ass. Please, I’m yours.” There’s an obscene squelching sound as Bucky pushes his cock into Steve’s obviously already-dripping hole, and Tony gasps as Steve grabs him tight, squeezing his smaller body almost too hard. 

Bucky growls and pulls Steve away before any damage can be done from the ferocity of his hold, tugging his hips back and twisting them so that Steve’s on his front, ass up, impaling himself on Bucky’s cock. Bucky then pushes Tony’s shoulder down, forcing him onto his back, and bends down to rub his stubbled jaw, his neck against Tony’s thighs. 

The scenting immediately calms Tony from an anxiety he hadn’t noticed rising, and then Bucky lifts his head and shoves Steve higher up the cushion, so that Bucky can grab Tony by the back of the neck. 

“Mine,” Bucky growls. “Omega.  _ Mine _ .”

“Alpha,” Tony whispers, and at that moment his ass releases a flood of slick, with an embarrassing corresponding shift to his scent that makes his cheeks run hot. Next to him, though, Steve makes a delighted sound and stretches his neck to nuzzle at Tony’s cheek. 

“Yes, yes!” he cries softly in Tony’s ear as Bucky shoves into him. “Pack, Tony... pack, pack.” His cheek is rubbing against the pillows, heavy with Bucky’s scent, and his eyes are glassy. He’s phenomenally beautiful. Tony doesn’t say a thing but he doesn’t stop Bucky either as he leans in and gets his jaws around Tony’s throat. 

In the deepest places of his soul, he’s wanted a bond for so  _ fucking _ long.

Tony comes immediately. 

Bucky goes a little wild after that, pistoning into Steve’s ass but at the same time smearing his mouth over Tony’s, biting at Tony’s lips and drawing out his tongue. He rubs his scent into Tony’s body and Tony starts to lose time. His skin is flushed all over and he realizes he’s following Steve right over the cliff into a full heat. 

Bucky’s fucking Steve like a stallion, and when Steve finally cries out his orgasm, one that just goes on and on, Bucky pops his knot with a shout, stilling inside Steve’s body, and then sinks his teeth in over Tony’s bonding gland. It takes force; the spot evolved to stand up against accidental piercing. But it’s easy for Bucky, and the unbearable pain is immediately swamped by indescribable pleasure. Tony’s forced to come again, dry, and it hurts but is also incredibly intimate, Bucky’s scent flooding his receptors that have opened wide from the bond bite so that Tony’s submission feels like a rock at the bottom of a pond, Bucky’s cock like salvation. 

The bond knocks him out, and when Tony comes to he’s still pretty out of it. Bucky’s sliding his knot in and out of Tony’s dripping ass, a motion that takes considerable force and makes Tony’s every internal muscle feel stretched beyond belief. He’s going to  _ crave _ this feeling, he realizes. He’s completely consumed. He’s had sex with an alpha, sure, but not  _ his _ Alpha. He had no idea it would be like this; and it’s even more beautiful with Steve nuzzling his cheek, whispering praise as Tony takes that huge knot. 

When Bucky finally pulls out, after ten minutes of rest with his cock slowly pumping come into Tony’s guts, he’s already growling at Steve again. They go thrice more before Tony needs a knot again, and it’s kind of amazing that Bucky can actually provide it. Supersoldier stamina is obviously not to be trifled with, but Tony’s never witnessed it on an alpha.

When they finally tire out and Tony drifts off, sandwiched between the two of them, he has the fleeting thought that he’s never in his life been quite this happy.

~*~

Of course, the drug  _ and _ the triggered heats eventually wear off. Tony feels like he’s been run ragged, but both Steve and Bucky are quickly functioning at full capacity. He’s seen Steve during a heat, even when they’ve synced up and can directly compare, but it’s still not fucking fair. 

Bucky doesn’t suddenly find his words when they’re clear-headed again. His own feral nature is clearly something older. How he’s even  _ alive _ is a huge fucking mystery, let alone where he’s been all this time. But he instinctively feeds them energy bars from his stash and anxiously scent marks them as they start to come back to themselves, clearly taking his role as a pack alpha seriously.

The other Avengers aren’t going to get it. Pack behavior in general is at least lightly frowned upon, and none of their teammates are dynamic. Bucky’s animalistic nature speaks of something very dark, especially when combined with his superhuman abilities and how long he’s been lost. 

Tony’s not sure he wants to know how this happened to Steve’s Alpha. To  _ their _ Alpha. The rest of the team very well may not trust Bucky.

But they’ll figure it all out. They have to.

**Epilogue:**

SHIELD Director Nicholas J. Fury and his Deputy, Agent Hill, have been debriefed by their two loyal agents and backup team by the time they’re able to watch the quinjet land in the Tower hangar on a live feed. The four-man Avengers team entered the HYDRA facility shortly after dusk and met substantial resistance, but cleared the facility with no surviving prisoners. They swept the subterranean base for data, and were near the end of their sweep with no remaining heat signatures detected by Stark’s tech when Steve and Tony went to follow a cable to a possible server room. 

At that point, according to Hawkeye and Widow, the comms went dead and when they went to investigate they found a steel gate blocking the end of the tunnel to the server room. By the time they’d investigated the gate, looking for some way to penetrate it, the tunnel was swarmed with a new wave of HYDRA agents who had presumably been waiting out of range or using some kind of technology to mask or lower their body heat. The fight out of the tunnel was rough, with Barton shooting over Romanoff’s shoulder and Romanoff taking a stab wound to the thigh, but they eventually cleared both the tunnel and the rest of the facility. At that point, the two Avengers and their support team started looking for some unmapped route to Iron Man and Cap’s location. 

In the end, the missing half of the team found them first. What’s more, Steve and Tony emerged not alone but accompanied by a growling, feral alpha. The Winter Soldier. Fury had to ask Romanoff to repeat that claim twice before he was willing to accept it. But of course he remembers 2009, the hit on the nuclear engineer. And he also remembers her reports of very vague memories of earlier encounters with the Soldier during her training with the KGB. She would know him. Fury doesn’t trust her, not entirely, but Fury doesn’t trust anyone. This is the closest he gets.

So now they’re watching on live feeds from the Helicarrier, nearly to New York, as the three men disembark and enter the Tower.

There are no feeds  _ inside _ the Tower that JARVIS will let them access, as he strangely doesn’t deem this an emergency, but they can speculate. According to the other half of the Avengers’ mission team remaining on site (Banner wasn’t supposed to be needed for this one, too big a risk underground), they were able to locate a delivery system for a chemical agent—a kind of drug used only on alphas and omegas to heighten their natural instincts. Since Agents Barton and Romanoff are non-dynamic, they weren’t affected by the drug despite contact. The team also found seven bodies surrounded by rappelling cables, all joined to a raggedly severed main line.

Fury is familiar with the chemical compound they found—it makes omegas scared and docile and dependent and alphas violent and ruthless. It shouldn’t, on the other hand, have allowed the Soldier to be  _ protective  _ towards the two Avengers, unless he already had that instinct towards at least one of them. 

Romanoff also called back after an hour of searching the facility and then hacking one of the agent’s phones, which she used to get into HYDRA’s servers and locate some interesting evidence on the Soldier’s recent behavior.

Erraticism. Based on the context of the files, it’s clear that HYDRA isn’t used to the Soldier being able to “do” erratic, and they’ve been caught off guard by their Asset’s misbehavior. 

The key mission report describes a shitshow following a high-profile assassination Fury had wondered whether to pin on HYDRA. The report clarifies that answer, but also presents several more questions. Apparently the Soldier suddenly became impossible to control as soon as he got within scenting range of a particular HYDRA agent at the rendez-vous. He violently slaughtered the man (a mole who had been operating within SHIELD, Fury’s livid to identify), refused orders to stand down despite the use of codewords HYDRA has apparently been using to control him, and quickly evaded his handlers.

HYDRA’s been attempting to track him down ever since, but with little luck. The Soldier’s ruthless, highly trained, and reading between the lines Fury surmises that they’ve never had a problem with these codewords before. Investigation of the dead agent’s clothing revealed a scent match for one Captain Steven G. Rogers, and Fury confirms that the man did in fact have contact with Rogers eight hours previous. A coincidence that Fury isn’t willing to mark in the lucky  _ or _ unlucky column just yet. 

The Soldier certainly doesn’t seem to be acting voluntarily, but his true mental state is impossible to ascertain. He was clearly feral at the time he encountered the SHIELD team, but neither Steve nor Tony appeared distressed. Steve, especially, is a terrible liar, and Fury would put money on Romanoff being able to sniff out any dissonance between Steve’e emotional state and his demeanor. 

HYDRA’s files don’t contain any information on the Soldier’s nationality or identity. In the reports, they don’t even describe him as the Winter Soldier. He’s just “the Asset,” so important he doesn’t need further designation. On the plus side, he’s been wreaking havoc for HYDRA since his escape, and havoc for HYDRA is always a good thing in Fury’s book. In fact, it seems that the Soldier may be personally responsible for some of the information they’ve recently been able to find and use to root out double agents within SHIELD. That information is how they found out about this facility in the first place. So Fury’s grateful, really.

But on the flip side this unknown agent currently has physical custody of two Avengers, neither of whom have sent so much as a peep of word to HQ. Fury doesn’t believe that Tony  _ Stark _ would be unable to communicate, particularly within his own Tower, even under duress. So Stark either doesn’t  _ want _ to communicate, doesn’t feel he needs to, or is incapacitated. And if the latter were true, Rogers would be causing a hell of a lot of visible damage within that building.

And then there’s another piece of the picture. 

One of the HYDRA reports on the search for their Asset notes that the Soldier seems to be looking for his omega. That might explain the failure of the codewords, as alpha/omega bonds are extremely powerful and can override pretty much every human instinct. But if that’s indeed the case, why wouldn’t HYDRA have safeguarded against the possibility? And if Steve’s scent was the trigger, then what’s the relationship between Steve and the Winter Soldier’s omega? The contact with Steve might have been coincidence, but if so, why would HYDRA note it?

Unless....

It seems completely farfetched, even for the world they operate in. But as he goes over the possibilities with Maria, waiting to see whether SHIELD techs can break down JARVIS’s firewalls and let them see what the  _ hell _ is going on in there with two of his elite team before they actually storm the Tower, Fury’s suspicion grows. He can’t quite shake the feeling, and in a very  _ strange _ way, Occam’s razor does suggest the simplest solution. So he pulls up an archival photograph of Sergeant James Buchanan Barnes, then compares it to an image of the Soldier that one of his agents managed to capture. 

“Son of  _ bitch _ .”

“Sir?”

“Bucky Barnes. That’s Bucky Barnes,” Fury mutters as the feed (all possible camera angles controlled by a tech in the next room) cuts to a black Audi peeling out of one of the street-level entrances to Stark’s garage. Hill orders a tail on them, but Fury’s already several steps ahead of her (rare, but he’s always been a history buff). 

“Barnes scented Rogers on the mole,” he explains. “HYDRA was using some kind of powerful NLP to control him, but it would still be overridden by an alpha scenting their omega. It’s their prime instinct.”

“So he slipped HYDRA’s leash.”

“He has the serum, or something like it,” Fury hypothesizes, based on what his agents reported back and the condition of the bodies (especially given that Steve and Tony, two omegas dosed like that, wouldn’t have been able to fight their captors). “I’ll bet you anything they expected the bond had faded. They’d cover his scent for practicality, and Cap was supposed to be dead for so long… why would they worry about it?”

“Would’ve helped their cause, too,” Maria points out. “He couldn’t accidentally bond with another omega if he hadn’t rejected the first bond and Rogers didn’t die. Why would Pierce let him do missions, though, once he knew Cap was alive?”

The SecDef’s betrayal still fucking hurts, more so the betrayal of one of his oldest friends, but Fury still knows how Alexander thinks. “He knew there was a risk,” Fury assesses, bitterness in his tone. “But the Soldier was too valuable an Asset to take out of the game entirely when he knew we were onto him. I wouldn’t have done it.” He sighs. “So he got out, and his first priority was tracking down Cap’s scent, whether he consciously knows who he Steve or not. Now  _ our _ priority is finding out what the hell happened to him, and bringing him in..  _ after _ they’ve had some time off the grid for Rogers to convince him we’re not the enemy. Drop the tail.”

Maria’s silent for a long moment, her expression a tight frown. 

“I’m not comfortable sanctioning rape, Sir. If he’s consenting, it’s likely under duress. Rogers won’t be able to protect him  _ from his own Alpha _ .”

“Yeah, well I’m not comfortable risking the dozen or more agents it would take to bring the Winter Soldier down when they’re clearly trying to stay together. And frankly, even that isn’t guaranteed to work.”

Maria frowns. “Is this really what Stark wants? You know how he is.”

“Sure,” Fury agrees. “But it’s different with Dynamics. If Stark wanted help, he’d have no trouble calling for it.” He hits a button and shuts all the screens down. “You don’t need to be responsible for the call on this one.  _ I’m _ not fucking with a pack, Agent Hill. Case closed.”

She stands there a moment, meeting his eye, and then nods briskly and marches out of the room. Fury leans back against the wall, staring at the dark screens. Who knows what comes next, or what this means for the Initiative. But he’s got more to think about than just Sergeant Barnes. He thinks of Natasha’s background, the conspicuously absent birth year in her file. She says she doesn’t know it. She also says she remembers the Soldier from training, from the Red Room. They’ve assumed the program was operating later than American intelligence has uncovered, but according to HYDRA files Barnes hasn’t been in Russian hands since the early 80s. Natasha doesn’t look a day over 32. 

Something’s rotten in Denmark, and Fury intends to get to the bottom of it.

  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  



End file.
